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Why You Build Ahead of Time: Wilson's Outburst Turns ActBlue Tap On for Miller [Updated]

BY Nancy Scola | Friday, September 11 2009

UPDATE: ActBlue announces that Rob Miller has been fundraising on the site at a rate of $7 per second since Joe Wilson's outburst Wednesday night. The mean contribution size, says the company in a press release, has been $36. ActBlue chair Matt DeBergalis: "This is what ActBlue was built to do."

Rob Miller is a man who can spot a moment he sees one, it seems. South Carolina Democrat Miller -- also a man lucky enough to be set up as the main challenger to the guy who happened to shout "You lie!" at Barack Obama during Wednesday health address to the assembled House and Senate, has redirected his official campaign site -- RobMillerforCongress.com, so that it now jumps directly to the fundraising hub ActBlue.

Miller no doubt had some digital way for people to drop money into his campaign coffers on his old, own website. But ActBlue is where the magic is right now, and Miller knows enough to know it. Since Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst two nights ago, Miller has been the recipient of a rather remarkable $717,000 in fundraising through ActBlue, that unglamorous yet core piece of Democratic infrastructure. We're coming up on contributions from just under 20,000 people. That's some serious money in a South Carolina House race, and Miller was already in a decent position to begin with, having made a strong challenge against the five-term congressman in the 2008 race. (For its part, Slatecard -- more or less aspiring to be the ActBlue of the right -- has redirected its own homepage to a "Support Joe" fundraising drive. Meanwhile, inspiring great confidence in the republic, Wilson's official House.gov website has gone down "due to exceptionally high traffic.")

Folks from Daily Kos have raised a giant chunk of that money, some $227,000 and counting as of this morning...

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